Credit

I love credit card commercials.

I don't love them in the way that I love cotton commercials, or nike commercials (you know, the ones that promote girls in sport, or the virtue of kids sports, or just shoes with sappy music). Those make me tear up pretty much everytime.

Credit card commercials on the other hand are just entertaining. Whoever came up with the mastercard masterpiece should be living a life on a beach with hot men and women with impeccable tans bringing them drinks every half hour, massages every day, etc. I'm almost as impressed with American Express "this is my card" campaign. First they included a gay woman in their ranks (Ellen), then they came up with the Andy Roddick vs. Pong commercial. Since Pong is the hallmark game of an entire generation, I can only sit back, shake my head, and mutter, "Genius".

(as a side note, you know that commercial encouraging people to use debit cards instead of checks? the one where the person has to wait for hours because their writing a check instead of using debit? nearly that exact thing happened to me in the post office the other day - first the woman needed help understanding that her mail wasn't at this p.o., it was at the OTHER one, then she wanted to look at her options for stamps (blankets or vegetables???), then she wanted to know how much delivery confirmation was, and then... she pulled out her check book. *sigh* being able to meditate in public is an important skill.)

The good ol' days

I visited my old haunts this morning - specifically the School of Nursing - to get acquainted with my new classroom. I'm going to be teaching a class this fall at Tracy and I's alma mater (do you still call it that when it's grad school?) and it was more than a little weird to walk the halls 4 years after graduation. It still smells the same, and it still gives me the identical barely perceptiple nausea associated with being enrolled in a school with people far smarter than you.

Moreover, I got relive the city driving that is New Haven. New Haven thinks it's New York. It's not, but the drivers still pretend that it is. It was kind of fun to pass all the old drinking holes, restaurants, etc that I never get to see anymore, all while attempting to get my car out of there without any scratches.

Ah, grad school. *sigh* those were the days....

The white coats are coming!

There is a time-honored ritual during which new medical students receive their first white coat. My brother got his this week. I'm simaltaneously exceedingly proud, and exceedingly hopeful his career will lead him to a place where he won't need a white coat to be a doctor.

You are amazing JZ! (not to be confused with JC, whom he resembled at one point in his young life)

humming along

As some of you may remember, I spent a post earlier this summer encouraging everyone to hang a hummingbird feeder immediately. I had done so, and couldn't wait to spend hours watching the hummingbirds in their infinite beauty. I didn't get any humming birds all summer.

Until Friday, when I looked outside and simaltaneously noticed that the water level was down in the feeder, and there was a hummingbird!! It's hard to express the sheer joy that I experienced when I saw it there on the feeder. Presumably now the webster hill hummingbird posse knows where there's free food and many more will come!

Pearl

I guess it's better to turn 29 than 30, or at least how it seems from the 29 side. My mom and Anna very generously got me a piano for my birthday. And she is simply beautiful.

I've nicknamed her Pearl. (The name is totally unoriginal - the manufacturer is Pearl River)

Part meditation-assistant, part computer game stand-in, part musical addiction, I am so excited to have a piano! Needless to say I haven't played in a long time and lessons will be needed to achieve previously attained skill.

First up: Moonlight Sonata, my favorite piece of all time.

Wimpy, disloyal, whiny, punk-a$$

Sometimes when I hear Joe Lieberman talk, all I can picture is a kid with asthma on the grammar school playground. He goes out to recess everyday but doesn’t play with his classmates because he is afraid he might have an attack. Instead of going out to the see-saw, or reading quietly up against the brick building, he wants to sit and ponder his Highlights Magazine right near the kickball field. Then he cries and whines to the “authorities” every time a kickball is in play because, “They are kicking and throwing it too close to me!!!”

The teachers monitoring recess spend 12-20 minutes every day cajoling and bribing him to “Come read near me,” to try and get Joe out of the way. Sometimes he pitches a fit and refuses to leave his reading perch on the first base line. Other times he finally agrees to come away when one of the staff produces a peanut-free granola treat. He has no diagnosed allergy to nuts, but it doesn’t stop him from barking at the authorities, “ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME?!?” when their first offer is a fun-size package of Peanut M&Ms.

There are several shaded areas on the school side of the playground and Joe approaches the only occupied one, where an epileptic kid in Coke-bottle thick glasses is quietly playing with 12-sided dice. “This is my spot,” Joe is overheard whimpering, “I like to sit here when I am not over there.” He points to the kickball field. The recess monitors are about to intervene on behalf of the skinny kid that the other kids call, Spaz. But before they have the chance, to stop Joe’s bullying, the other boy rolls his eyes, grabs his dice, and heads for a quieter space.

Once he’s settled into his protected spot near the building, Joe removes a clean tissue from the Ziploc in his right pocket, dries his tears, and blows his nose with an air of indignant self-righteousness. The bell rings, and as kids crowd around the door attempting to get back to class, Joe stalls the line because he is in the middle of stashing his used snot rag in the ½ full Ziploc out of his left pocket labeled “dirty tissues.” Joe won’t move out of the way, won’t hold a soiled tissue in his bare hand, and he can’t walk and zip simultaneously. As he gets nervous, the bag-sealing process is further delayed. He blames the trouble he is having on the fact that there are “too many people- too close” to him and “They are not paying attention to what they are doing!” Finally, when a little girl in dreads reaches over in empathy and quickly seals the bag, Joe- lacking any gratitude or humility- loudly proclaims, “I could have done that all by myself!”

End of an Era...

Holy Cow...
Now I can go to bed...

Could the pendulum be swinging?

This is pretty remarkable... the Democratic Senate primary race in Connecticut has been (surprisingly) hotly contested and (recently) highly touted as the earliest indicator of how far from the status quo SNAFU that the voters of our great nation are leaning/fleeing.

It looks (dare I say it) that Ned Lamont might actually be about to pull this off... With 83% of votes reported, Lamont leads the incumbent 52% to 48%. I have to admit, that I was undecided in this race until last evening. I am not a Democratic party loyalist... I have several complaints about "politics as usual" within and among the DNC. But last night, I decided that I wanted to be sure above all else that i cast a vote FOR someone and not AGAINST someone. So I picked up the phone when a representative from Lamont's headquarters called and started asking questions... NL is against the sacrifice of civil liberties in the name of the war on terror. He believes that health care is a right not a privilege. He is committed to education:

What our country spends in one year in Iraq could provide a year's free tuition at the University of Connecticut for every college freshman-aged American and Head Start for every four-year-old. We need to refocus our resources and our attention on the children and young people here.

Lamont is for full marriage equality:

I am proud that Connecticut was one of the first states to legalize civil unions and remain hopeful that we will be one of the first to enact full marriage equality. Unlike Senator Lieberman, I would have opposed the Federal Defense of Marriage Act.

And perhaps most importantly, Lamont opposes allowing George Bush to continue to go unchecked in waging a war started under false pretenses. This war has not made us safer and done little to positively impact anyone except for the few Americans who have significant financial stakes in the low or no-bid contracts offered by the current executive branch of the US government.

I thought i was undecided, until I started to consider Joe Lieberman. Joe has 1) left my people high and dry and 2) snuggled up nice and close to King George whenever the Snickerer in Chief needed to point across the aisle and say, "We all stand together."

But seriously, in my final evaluation of the situation, I realized that the deal-breaker for me was the emotional blackmail offered up by the Big Man on Campus. Back in July, the man who ran as the Democratic candidate for Vice President of the United States a mere 6 years ago announced he would NOT honor the collective voice of the democratic voters of CT. If he lost the primary, he would run as an independent... Because I guess Joe Loserman feels that it is not the Democratic party or voters that he owes anything to... It must be his winning personality that has kept him in the Senate since I was a high school softball star!

Lieberman is so committed (to HIMSELF) that at the first opportunity, he will become an independent and leave open the chance for the party that created him to lose the seat entirely. Rather than wait to see the outcome of the primary, Lieberman started crying foul the minute it looked like someone might have a shot at his job. Upon (potentially) losing, he could have conceded that he made mistakes, that he played this last set poorly, and then regroup for the next challenge. Instead, his first instinct was to make a play to split the party to save his own A$$. Why allow the Dems of CT to make the call of who represents them just because it happens to be the very purpose of a primary??? I really am all for a multi-party system, but this guy is a piece of work...

May the best man win!!!

I never cared much for Sponge Bob...

Until I saw this...





Ring-ring, Ring-ring...





Heel-o *



I'd like to make a toe-call...



Wrong number:


Who's this dude, now?





We've been set up... on a baby date (YUCK!)

Presidential Humor

I have to say, I'm pretty depressed about the state of things in the US and internationally. Making fun of the president is not something that I think is helpful, and it is just kind of sad that there are so many clips that make this guy seems so dangerous and unintelligent. That having been said, I stumbled upon this and laughed for about 10 minutes.

I love YouTube.